This Gay Man Says You Have Options

Daniel Mingo | The Dr. J Show

Daniel Mingo shares his transformative journey from a troubled childhood marked by sexual abuse and confusion about his identity to finding healing and purpose through faith. As he candidly discusses the challenges of overcoming same-sex attraction and addiction, Daniel reveals the pivotal role of honest communication, spiritual discipline, and community support in his recovery.

His story challenges the “born gay” narrative, offering a powerful testament to the possibility of change and redemption. His interview is a must-watch for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of identity, faith, and personal transformation.

Daniel became a born-again Christian at age 17, yet for nearly 30 years secretly involved himself in homosexual activity through anonymous encounters. He is now the Founder and Ministry Director of Abba’s Delight, Inc. based in Louisville, KY.

Abba’s Delight is a Christian ministry which assists born-again believers and families and friends of those who are gay-identified, resolve the conflict of the effects of homosexuality on their lives. Pastors and church staff receive assistance as well in ministering to those in their congregations whose lives have been impacted by homosexuality.

Joe Dallas’ Book: https://a.co/d/03OrhXY1

00:00 Why This Gay Man Says You’ve Got Options
02:47 The Secret No Child Could Prepare For
06:37 Married — and Hiding a Double Life
11:32 The Confession That Could Have Ended Everything
16:49 Addiction… or Identity?
21:43 Why Some People Walk Away
22:29 From Silence to a Ministry
24:00 When Attraction Becomes an Identity
25:41 “Born This Way?”
26:21 How Abba’s Delight Began
28:26 Why Mentorship Beats Programs
31:00 Raising Sons While Fighting Yourself
33:37 Does the Desire Ever Disappear?
37:08 If This Is Your Son…
43:38 You Have Options. Really.
48:40 What This Means for You

The Ruth Institute is building an interfaith coalition to defend the family. For in-depth conversations to help you find your way through the chaos of the Sexual Revolution, the Ruth Institute’s main YouTube channel is your place!

Subscribe to our newsletter to get a pdf of our report: Refuting the Top 5 Gay Myths https://ruthinstitute.org/refute-the-top-five-myths/

Transcript

(Please note the transcript is auto-generated and likely contains errors)

welcome to all of our viewers who are watching. In this episode, we’re going to call attention to something that the gay lobby has done very well, but we’re going to try to outdo them in that one thing that they’ve done very well. So stay tuned for my interview with Dan Mingle.
Daniel Mingo, welcome to the Dr. J Show.
Daniel Mingo (00:55)
Thank you, Dr. Morris. I’m excited to be here today.
Ruth Institute (00:58)
Daniel, tell us a little bit about your personal journey.
Daniel Mingo (01:04)
personal journey. Well, I grew up in a Catholic family in the 50s and I was the second of seven children. I had a basic understanding of the Catholic faith, but life was a little difficult for me. I didn’t seem to get along with my dad. He traveled a lot for work and things were just things were just not really good for me.
growing up. I didn’t feel like I was loved. I felt like that my parents did what they did for me, that they fed me and clothed me because if they didn’t, the police were going to come and take them away. I just…
Ruth Institute (01:48)
That was pretty minimal.
Daniel Mingo (01:49)
I was a messed up kid. And so I grew up in the Catholic school and learning the basic understandings and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. And I always had a heart for God. But I also had this feeling of this is horrible. If this was what life is supposed to be, I just don’t get it.
Ruth Institute (01:51)
care well.
Daniel Mingo (02:17)
I didn’t have friends. My older brother was always picking on me. There was a seven-year gap between me and the next kid, and it was just the four of us for many years. And I just didn’t feel like I fit in in a lot of places.
Ruth Institute (02:36)
And so that kind of gives us the background of your personality and how your life started. When did you first experience any inklings of same-sex attraction?
Daniel Mingo (02:47)
Well, that didn’t come until I was 13. I was coming home from a music lesson. It was the evening. I was taking the city bus. It only went out so far towards our house. I had to walk about another mile. I decided to hitchhike. This was 1965, when you thought it would be safe to do that.
It wasn’t safe. A man picked me up and he raped me in his car. And I was, it shocked me. In fact, I sat there for what seemed like 10 minutes before I felt like I could even move or say anything. Basically what he did was he reached his hand down into my pants and began to fondle me.
Ruth Institute (03:15)
Daniel Mingo (03:37)
and I just froze. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, after a few minutes when I came to myself, I said, let me out of the car. And it was about a mile back to my house. He did let me out of the car. But the weirdest thing when I was getting ready to close the door, getting out of the car, he said, now you be careful out there because you never know who’s going to pick you up. It was the most
Ruth Institute (03:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
my gosh, what a creepy
Daniel Mingo (04:04)
horrible thing
Ruth Institute (04:04)
thing to say.
Daniel Mingo (04:05)
I had ever experienced up until that age. And I ran the rest of the way home and I never told my parents about it, not for probably 40 years.
Ruth Institute (04:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wow, wow. And so what kind of impact did that have on you, Daniel?
Daniel Mingo (04:24)
Well, it really did put me on a trajectory towards being attracted to men and guys because I had just started puberty at 13 and I had not discovered anything that he exposed me to and masturbation became my new best friend because I felt estranged from my dad.
Ruth Institute (04:46)
Daniel Mingo (04:49)
because there wasn’t a good connection between me and my dad already. Here was a man paying some attention to me, albeit the wrong kind of attention, but…
my wounded boy inside grabbed onto that attention. And so I think in trying to connect with guys, I felt like this was a way I connected. So I began looking for that in other guys.
Ruth Institute (05:17)
So let me guess, in your opinion, do you think people are born gay?
Daniel Mingo (05:22)
No, not at all. No.
Ruth Institute (05:23)
That’s what I was going with. was like,
my gosh. This is not even a thought in your mind until this incident took place. It just never even entered your mind. so whatever other people, because often you hear people say, I was born this way. Everybody’s born this way. You at least are one counterexample, but you certainly were not born that way.
Daniel Mingo (05:44)
No, I was not born gay. And the science has never borne that out. And scripture doesn’t even bear it out.
Ruth Institute (05:53)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, doesn’t make people, everybody has original sin, but God doesn’t make you gay or God doesn’t put people in the wrong body, all that type of stuff. It’s very bad theology and very bad science, as you’ve already noted. So there you were, age 13, hitting puberty. Your sexual development was derailed, you could say, or sent down a very particular kind of track that you would not have chosen, right? Having to do with, you know,
self-stimulation and attraction to men. Now, how long did that go on? And did your family ever know about that part of your story?
Daniel Mingo (06:37)
Never told my family about it. In fact, if the Lord hadn’t brought me into ministry many, many years later, I would have kept it a secret from everybody. But the attractions continued on. In fact, all through my teenage years and my early adult years, I was secretly hooking up with guys.
Ruth Institute (06:47)
Wow.
Daniel Mingo (07:04)
and continued that even into my marriage.
Ruth Institute (07:04)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. So let’s talk about your marriage. Okay. So you married a woman, right? Marrying a guy wasn’t on the table in those days. And so you married a woman. What was your thought process when you chose to marry a woman and you still were having these attractions and sounds like doing these behaviors? Did she know? What was your whole, describe this, describe this for people, Daniel, because people have opinions about whether you should have done this or not or whatever, but what was going on in your mind?
Daniel Mingo (07:13)
Yes.
What? No, she didn’t.
He-
In order to do that effectively, I need to go back a little in time. I got born again, I got born again and gave my life to Christ when I was 17. And I thought he was gonna take away these attractions and he never did.
Ruth Institute (07:41)
Okay.
Okay.
Daniel Mingo (07:57)
At
Ruth Institute (07:57)
okay.
Daniel Mingo (07:58)
18, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, I’m going to give you a wife so that you can be a husband and a father. And I thought, now that’s going to be kind of strange because here I am attracted to guys.
and he’s gonna give me a husband, I mean, he’s gonna give me a wife and children. And I’m thinking, okay, Lord, how are you gonna work that out? Because I couldn’t work it out in my mind. So I started looking for my wife when I was 18. And I didn’t actually meet her until I was 30. And oddly enough,
Ruth Institute (08:29)
Wow.
Daniel Mingo (08:31)
Oddly enough, we had an arranged meeting.
We were both from churches who had a whole lot of singles and nobody was getting married. And our pastors started talking to one another, comparing notes. We both grew up Catholic. We both came from large families. We both sing. And they thought these two have something in common. Let’s see if they want to meet each other.
Well, I had been walking with the Lord seriously for 12 years by that time. So I said, sure, God can do anything. So when we met, we hit it off. In fact, yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the day we met.
Ruth Institute (09:14)
how nice!
Daniel Mingo (09:15)
Yeah, so and we married 13 months later. But I was a coward. I did not tell her about my same sex attractions. And all of these years I was following the Lord as closely as I knew how. But still being driven to hook up with men.
Ruth Institute (09:24)
Okay.
Would you describe it, Daniel? Daniel, you use the term driven. Would you describe it as an addiction or an addictive process of some sort?
Daniel Mingo (09:44)
Now I do. Now I do describe it as an addiction. But this was in the 70s when I started this path. And in the 80s when my wife and I got married and nobody was talking about addiction in terms of sex. People would say, well, you’re just over sexed.
Ruth Institute (09:45)
Right, right, just looking back on it.
Yes.
Daniel Mingo (10:09)
I think that was the term that was used back then. And while I may have been over sexed, there was this driving force in me that I would battle and I would resist and I would cry out to God all the time, take this away from me, take this away from me. And when I finally gave it up was in the early 90s and I was still crying out to the Lord.
Ruth Institute (10:09)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (10:34)
to take it away from me. And he broke through all of that that was in me. And he spoke to my heart and said, Daniel, I did not give this to you. I cannot take it away. You have to surrender it to me.
Ruth Institute (10:50)
okay. I’ve heard this phraseology from other people who have left pride behind. You surrender it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what prompted that? So this is the 90s. You’ve been married for how many years by that time?
Daniel Mingo (11:04)
I was married for 10 years by that time.
Ruth Institute (11:06)
I see, okay, and children?
Daniel Mingo (11:08)
We had three sons. And you asked before about how, know, about going into marriage, having the same sex attractions. I had no idea what my wedding night was gonna look like.
Ruth Institute (11:08)
Did you have children? You have three sons. So, so.
So.
Daniel Mingo (11:19)
But I knew
that the Lord had put us together. So I was trusting that He’s gonna work it out. He told me He was gonna give me a wife. He’s gonna work this out.
Ruth Institute (11:29)
So at what point did you tell your wife about it?
Daniel Mingo (11:32)
It was in 1993. I had been cheating on her during our marriage from years two through 10 when I was away on business trips. I never acted out when I was at home. It was always when I was away.
There’s a ritual to addictions. Part of my ritual was on the way home from acting out, I’m crying out to the Lord to still take it away from me. And I’m telling him, I can’t keep doing this. I’m trying to resist. I resist for a while and it always comes back. And…
I couldn’t get free of it on any kind of permanent basis. So that’s when the Lord spoke to me and said, Daniel, it’s time to tell Fran. Fran’s my wife. It’s time to tell her. Now, I knew that had to be the Lord because the devil’s not going to come along and say, OK, you can quit sinning now.
Ruth Institute (12:17)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Right, right, right. And you knew it wasn’t you because you would have thought of it a long time ago. You’d probably thought and discarded that idea multiple times over that 10-year period, right?
Daniel Mingo (12:43)
and I had tried to resist the temptation from the time I was 13 when I got raped until that time.
Ruth Institute (12:46)
Right. Right.
So let’s talk about this process that you went through because I think this will be interesting to people. It’s not a dialogue when there three people involved. The conversation that involved the Lord, you and your wife Fran, okay? And there’s a conversation and then there’s actions and there’s response and probably some back and forth, two steps forward, one step back, probably quite a bit of that. Tell people about that because I think I’m…
confident there are people watching who have had similar experiences with with addictive processes.
Daniel Mingo (13:26)
I do think my situation was a little bit unique because I did not get caught doing anything. So many wives who find out about their husbands homosexuality, they find out because they catch them doing something. That wasn’t what happened with me. I actually…
Ruth Institute (13:34)
Mm-hmm.
Right, right, And same with porn
addiction. And same with porn addiction, if I could throw that in, right? Because it’s a similar kind of thing. She leans over and she sees something on the computer. It’s not like he volunteers. honey, I have this problem. By far more typical would be she catches him. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Daniel Mingo (13:54)
Yes.
So I did volunteer to her in this conversation and told her just my whole life story about growing up with difficult parents. She knew my parents were difficult, but I told her more in depth about what it was growing up like with them and my brothers. I told her about being friendless growing up. I told her about being molested. She didn’t know that at all.
I told her that it set me on a path towards being attracted to guys. I told her that it was something that drove me to hook up with men. And I just gave it all to her in that one evening when I got a babysitter for the kids and we went out to dinner. And I just unfolded it to her, the whole thing.
Ruth Institute (14:56)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (15:01)
And her response was, well that explains a lot. Now the reason she had this very calm response was because my pastor and I, who knew what I was going through by that time, was very wise and he said, we need to pray for a few specific things before you make your confession to her.
First, we needed to pray that the Lord would prepare her heart to hear my confession, which was so wise to do. It’s not like I could just run home and say, honey, guess what? The Lord needed to prepare her heart. And then the other two things were, was that I would know the right time, have a sense for his timing in this confession, and be able to convey to her
Ruth Institute (15:34)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.
Mm-hmm. Right.
Daniel Mingo (15:50)
in words that she would be able to understand coming from me because this was going to be totally foreign to her.
Ruth Institute (15:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it sounds like you succeeded in the sense that when she said, explains a lot, it means you didn’t, it wasn’t a complete shock to her somehow.
Daniel Mingo (16:12)
Well, the homosexuality was a shock. What wasn’t a shock were the things about growing up that I had experienced. Those were the things.
Ruth Institute (16:16)
Mm-hmm.
I see. I see.
And that showed up in other
ways, that showed up in other ways in your family life and so on. There you go. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Our friend in Singapore, Dr. Brian Shen, often talks about that. know, that when people have a same-sex attraction as part of their personality, there’s the contributing factors have a life of their own and cause problems of their own, even if they’re not acting out sexually, that stuff still needs to be addressed, right?
Daniel Mingo (16:27)
Yes.
Ruth Institute (16:49)
So this is a very interesting thing. And so at that point, so you had this dramatic moment and it sounds like it went as well as one could expect. What was it like after that, Daniel?
Daniel Mingo (16:50)
Yes.
Well, that was the point at which we realized this is an addiction for me. And my wife described it as this sin had leached itself onto me and we just needed to figure out a way how we were gonna get it off of me. Now, there’s something to include here that’s important, I think. And that’s that I never identified as gay.
Ruth Institute (17:08)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (17:27)
I never took on a gay identity. I never wanted to be in a relationship. It was all about the sex with guys. And that was the addictive nature to it. It drove me to hook up with guys.
Ruth Institute (17:37)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (17:43)
So I never wanted to be in the gay lifestyle. There was never a time in my relationship with the Lord that continued from that point at 17 where I thought he was okay with any of this. So after every instance of hooking up, I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m going through this repentance. I’m crying out to the Lord to take it away that I don’t want it.
Ruth Institute (17:54)
I see, I see.
Daniel Mingo (18:08)
So it wasn’t until this time after I confessed it to my wife that I was at a place where I could surrender it and do something about it. So I went into recovery for sexual addiction right after that confession.
Ruth Institute (18:24)
And it sounds like that was, was that process helpful to you?
Daniel Mingo (18:28)
Absolutely, absolutely. It has been 32 years now, almost 33, since I have had any sexual contact with anyone but my wife.
Ruth Institute (18:29)
Yes, yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I’m going to ask you for a hypothetical. And that is, what do you think would have happened if you had encountered a church community that said, God made you gay. This is OK. This is your true self. And you had embraced a gay identity. What do you think would have been different in your life if you had done that?
Daniel Mingo (19:05)
I would have started looking for a new church.
Ruth Institute (19:08)
so you knew better. You were already convicted on that point and you weren’t going to be persuaded by a pastor saying something like that.
Daniel Mingo (19:15)
When I was
raped, when I was raped at 13, I didn’t know.
exactly what it was that he had done to me. Like I said, I was just starting puberty and I had not discovered masturbation. So, but I knew instinctively that what this man did to me was wrong.
Ruth Institute (19:29)
Mm-hmm.
Right, you know what, I have talked to any number of childhood sexual abuse survivors. None of them think, gee, was fine. was just that the parents were upset. That’s what really made it wrong. No, instinctively, every child knows that there’s something wrong here. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Mingo (19:51)
Yes. And so then when I got born again at 17 and I started reading the scriptures, it confirmed in me what I already believed. Now, at this point, I still haven’t told anybody about it. I didn’t start telling people about it until I was into my 20s. So I knew instinctively that it was wrong. I’m continuing to follow the Lord as closely as I know how.
Ruth Institute (20:00)
Right. Right. Right.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (20:16)
I’m reading the scriptures, I’m knowing what his word says, but this thing was still driving me. So I got into recovery for sexual addiction and continued in that recovery process. I got counseling along the way, not for the homosexuality, but for the trauma that I experienced.
Ruth Institute (20:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (20:39)
and for
anger that I carried after that happened to me.
Ruth Institute (20:42)
Yes. Yes.
Daniel Mingo (20:43)
So that was the only counseling that I got along this whole way.
Ruth Institute (20:49)
But
the 12-step process is a kind of peer support process. And early on, it sounds like you had pastoral care that was sensitive to your faith convictions about what was right and wrong. if you had encountered a different kind of pastor, that might have been different. I want to stop now and just point out to everybody that I think it’s safe to say that Daniel Mingo has never really fully embraced pride.
Daniel Mingo (20:56)
Yes.
Yes.
Ruth Institute (21:17)
but whatever that was, he left it behind. He left all of that behind. The gay lobby has done a very good job of convincing people, everyone knows somebody who’s gay. And in that process, they convince people to come out and confess their attractions and so on and so forth. And so now everybody does know somebody who’s gay. I’ll bet you, based on our data that we’ve gathered, Daniel, I’ll bet you there are millions of people.
who left pride behind in one form or another, whether it’s just the attraction and the behavior or whether it’s full on identity. I want to challenge our followers who are watching this video, go into the comments and anyone that you know who left pride behind, maybe it’s you yourself, maybe you have a friend or a neighbor or a cousin, or you know somebody, you know somebody who has this as part of their life journey, that they had some part of a gay identity.
some part of a gay behavior, some part of a gay feeling, and they’ve left it behind one way or another. Please tell us about that in the comments. I think that’ll be a very interesting and enlightening conversation. Now, Daniel, you now have a ministry of your own. It’s called Abba’s Delight. Can you tell us a little bit about that ministry? I’d like to hear about it.
Daniel Mingo (22:29)
Yes.
Well,
10 years into my own recovery process, the Lord spoke to my heart again and said, now I’m going to put you into ministry because there are men coming along behind you who need to know my redemptive power in the homosexual’s life.
There was a period of time when I was a worship leader before I had gotten into recovery. And this was in the city where we were living, Lexington, Kentucky. And in my church, I was leading worship. And one Sunday, this would have been in the late 80s, there was a fellow who came and spoke at our church from a ministry just like mine.
that I ended up having, and he was talking about being set free from homosexuality. And there I am sitting up on the platform with the pastors, and I’m feeling like my face is very red because this man is telling his story, but he’s talking about me.
Ruth Institute (23:30)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (23:36)
and I was too afraid to do anything about it. That was probably at least five years prior to when the Lord apprehended me that way. So when I began doing ministry, it was the Lord moving me into a place where he was desiring for me to help other men who were coming through the same situations that I had come through. And it showed to me that in addition to his word saying that this is something that was a part of my life in the past that I could impart to other men that it doesn’t need to be a part of their lives any longer.
I think there’s a deception in the church, in the overall church, that if you have these attractions, or if you look at gay porn, that means you are gay. And that is not the truth of God’s word, because he says, and such were some of you.
Ruth Institute (24:36)
Right.
Right.
Such were some of you. That’s right.
That lie, I’ll tell you something. Born gay has been one of the most destructive myths out there, in my opinion. And the whole controversy over counseling and regulating counseling and regulating out of existence certain type of counseling, that, in my opinion, is the gay lobby’s effort to circle the wagons around the born gay myth to protect it. Because, like you said, the science is not there.
They know the science is not there. And then there are so many stories like yours that are, you know, obvious counter examples to what they’re saying, you know. So they’re desperate. They are literally desperate to protect the born gay myth. And it’s so demoralizing to the people who are trying to deal with it, who don’t want, for a whole bunch of different reasons, people don’t want this in their lives. And it’s just so, it can be such a heavy weight on them to.
believe, you know, if they believe they were born gay, then that just becomes more more difficult for them to deal with. When did you start Abba’s Delight, Daniel?
Daniel Mingo (26:18)
I started Abba’s Delight in 2008. started my first four and a half years in ministry. I was the branch director here in Louisville where I live now of the same ministry that sent somebody to my church all those years before. They had been looking to branch out and I didn’t know that.
Ruth Institute (26:21)
Okay.
Daniel Mingo (26:41)
I had met the staff of that ministry in later years after I had started my recovery because they would go to different churches and share their testimonies. So I went to some of their seminars. So in 2002, the Lord was when the Lord spoke to me and said he was going to put me into ministry.
And I went to another one of their seminars, but I went to my pastor at the time here in Louisville. He was the one who had very wisely instructed me to, for us to pray for those things before I told Fran about what was going on with me.
Ruth Institute (27:33)
Okay, so this is your long
time pastor, long time relationship with this pastor. Okay, yeah, okay.
Daniel Mingo (27:38)
Yes, yes.
And so when I went to another one of that ministry’s seminars, I reintroduced myself to them, because I hadn’t seen them for a couple of years, I gave them a summary of my story.
and said, and now I believe the Lord is telling me that he wants to put me into ministry and you’re going to be receiving a letter from my senior pastor recommending me to you for ministry. And the executive director was a lady and she got all excited and said, Daniel, what you don’t know is that we’ve been praying for a few years to expand into Louisville.
you are answered prayer. And so I started with them in 2003 and stayed with them until the end of 2007. And that’s when the Lord started unfolding to me that he wanted me to start Abba’s delight. So he started showing me things that I needed to do and
Ruth Institute (28:28)
There you go.
Okay.
Daniel Mingo (28:53)
We had it up and running in April of 2008.
Ruth Institute (28:56)
Okay, very good. And you’re still operating this ministry. And is it for men and women, Daniel?
Daniel Mingo (29:00)
Yes. Yes.
Well, it would be, except in 22 years of ministry now, the Lord has only sent me four women and never any at the same time. So I couldn’t put a woman in a support group full of men because most women who are coming out of the gay life or same sex attracted,
Ruth Institute (29:16)
Interesting, interesting.
Right.
Daniel Mingo (29:30)
have issues with men, so it wouldn’t be a safe place for them. So I would do counseling with them. And there was a church here in Louisville at the time when those women came who did have a group for women. And so I would send her there for her group experience. And then I would do counseling with them individually.
Ruth Institute (29:35)
Right, right.
Mm-hmm.
I
see. I see. That makes sense. And it’s not surprising. Your door is open, but a certain set of persons tend to be attracted to it or drawn to it. And that’s part of way any kind of ministry is going to work that way, is going to have that element that you’d serve anybody. But only a certain kind of person continues to show up. over the years, Daniel, how many people would you say you have served through Abba’s Dilt?
Daniel Mingo (30:14)
Sure.
Ruth Institute (30:20)
Delight.
Daniel Mingo (30:21)
Well, through counseling specifically, I’d say between 125 and 150 in those years. I run Abba’s Delight differently than a lot of ministries do that do the same thing that I do. Early on, when I was setting up Abba’s Delight,
Ruth Institute (30:31)
Okay.
Daniel Mingo (30:46)
The Lord made it clear that He wanted me to be discipling men because so many men, and I got into this in my 50s. So for a lot of the guys who were coming to me, I’m looking like a father figure to them.
Ruth Institute (30:49)
Mm-hmm.
Correct, correct, correct. And you know how important the father figure is to the healthy sexual development, right? So yeah, that’s perfect. Do you know what, Daniel? I have said this so many times and I’m sure you’re gonna agree with what I’m gonna, well, I shouldn’t set you up like that, but nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted. God does not waste anything. The worst thing you’ve ever done in your life, the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, what you thought was a big disaster at the time.
Daniel Mingo (31:09)
Yes.
Ruth Institute (31:30)
God uses everything. And so here he is, you know, a fatherless boy, basically, who’s been abused by an older man. And he’s using that to heal others. You know, that’s pretty amazing. mean, that’s our God. That’s our God right there.
Daniel Mingo (31:49)
There’s a bit of humor about that idea too. God took a guy with a messed up sexual identity and then gave him three sons to teach how to be men.
Ruth Institute (31:59)
What was he thinking? You and your wife are going, what? And yet, so talk about that. What was that like for you? What was that like for your sons? If we had your sons here, what would they say?
Daniel Mingo (32:15)
Well, because I had such a difficult time with my dad, being a dad to my own sons, I knew I wanted to do it differently, but I didn’t have anybody to show me how to do it differently. And actually it was my wife speaking into my life, things that she would observe. And so a lot of that wisdom came from her speaking into my life.
and
I guess, and I’ve never said this before, I guess I can say now that I practiced on my own sons, but have done, I believe, a whole lot better with the Lord’s help, kind of being a father to a lot of these men he’s brought me in ministry. So while a lot of the ministries out there,
Ruth Institute (32:59)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (33:03)
are centered around programs and you do this workbook for so long and then you graduate out. I’ve got guys that have been with me for over 20 years because they see the wisdom in sticking around to be continued in their discipling. Because churches don’t disciple these days. They get converts, but they don’t disciple.
Ruth Institute (33:25)
So is it safe to say that part of ABBA’s Delight is a mentoring kind of program with you, a combination of counseling and mentoring? Is that safe to say?
Daniel Mingo (33:37)
Well, I consider mentoring discipleship. So, so yes, I am discipling them.
Ruth Institute (33:40)
I see, okay, fair enough, fair enough. But for people who
aren’t familiar perhaps with that kind of language, somebody who’s maybe from a different faith tradition or no tradition, no faith at all, and I hope those people are still watching because I hope people are interested enough in what we’re talking about to realize that there is some live hope here. Do you mind if I ask?
What particular branch of Christianity are you part of now? This church you’ve been part of, is it part of a denomination or anything like that?
Daniel Mingo (34:12)
If the charismatic movement in the Catholic Church in the early 70s had hit my congregation where I was the worship leader, I would have stayed. But I kept going to my monsignor and saying, look what I’m finding in the Bible here. And I read a book probably in 71 or 72.
called Catholic Pentecostals. And I had already been baptized in the Holy Spirit by that time. And I kept going to my monsignor and saying, look what it says here. How come we don’t do this? How come we don’t do this? He got tired of me doing that to him. So he put me on the parish council.
Ruth Institute (34:40)
Mm-hmm.
that’ll be the end of your faith right there. That’d be the end of anybody’s faith. What? dear, dear.
Daniel Mingo (34:59)
But the reason I left Dr.
Morse was because I didn’t see being able to grow in the Lord any more than I already had staying in my parish. And I didn’t know of any charismatic Catholics in my city at the time. And I needed to grow.
Ruth Institute (35:20)
I see, I see.
So you’re a charismatic now. Is there a, there are several different groups of charismatics. I’m not sure what all the labels mean, if you, do you have, what do you call yourself? Besides born again and born of the Holy Spirit. We get that, we get that.
Daniel Mingo (35:31)
We thank you for the last.
or the last.
Well, I found one of those churches that was Protestant in 74. And I became a part of that church, stayed in that church until…
after we got married, my wife was in a sister church that was here in Louisville at the time. And so when she moved to Lexington, when we got married, we remained a part of that church until 1990, when I got a job promotion that brought us back to Louisville, where I had met her when we first met. And…
Then we came back to the church that she was going to that was the same kind. So for 50 years, we’ve been part of this. I don’t want to call it a denomination because it really is non-denominational, but it was a church that was born out of the shepherding movement of the 70s.
Ruth Institute (36:40)
Okay, okay. that’s a… Would other Pentecostals recognize that particular variety of Pentecostalism?
Daniel Mingo (36:49)
They might. Some of the older ones might recognize some of the teachers, the nationally known teachers who were common during those times. But beyond those, probably not.
Ruth Institute (36:53)
Okay, okay.
I see.
Okay, okay. All fair enough, fair enough. I think you’ve told people, you’ve described enough about your faith experience that people can get the vibe of where you’re coming from, if I could put it that way. That’s a little bit, I don’t mean to be flippant when I say that, but I mean, I think you’ve described it enough that people can get an idea of where you’re coming from. Do know, as we’re kind of coming to the end of our time here,
Daniel Mingo (37:28)
or
Ruth Institute (37:39)
I’m interested to know of the people that you have shepherded and mentored and discipled over the years, probably some of them have had back and forth kinds of experiences with their thoughts and behaviors and so on and so forth. Talk to people a little bit about that. And the reason I would like you to do that is because oftentimes when we talk about people who have left pride behind, within 30 seconds of posting the video,
there’ll be some gay activists come on and say, either you’re really still gay, that guy is really gay and how they know that or think they know that I don’t, know, he talks funny or something, you know, I mean, but they’ll say that you’re really truly still gay or you weren’t really gay to begin with. Right. And so it’s it’s as if they’re expecting a healing that is perfect and and linear and never has any bumps in the road or backs and forth and stuff like that. So if you wouldn’t mind.
Just give us a general perspective on that process of advancing in terms of releasing and surrendering the same sex attraction and behavior, but not perfectly or having missteps or however you describe it in your own terms. think a lot of people will be interested in that.
Daniel Mingo (38:57)
Over the years, I’ve known a handful of people, maybe two hands full of people, that God, and I would term it miraculous, took them from totally gay to totally straight, where they had the attractions, they might have been acting on the attractions, they might have even adopted a gay identity.
And God miraculously touched them in such a way that they just left it all behind with nothing left in between and embraced their walk with the Lord totally. But that’s few and far between in the overall scheme of things. Most of us, myself included, most of us…
Ruth Institute (39:33)
Right. Right.
Daniel Mingo (39:38)
have to go through this sanctification, well, we all go through a sanctification process. But for a lot of us, that sanctification process includes dying to self regarding the attractions because he, for most of us, he hasn’t taken away the attractions. I’m still attracted to guys, but I’ve learned over the years,
how to deal with those attractions scripturally.
When I get a thought, the word says I need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That’s from 2 Corinthians. So there’s a lot of days when a lot of what’s going on in my day is, Father, I take that thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And I actually say it out loud if I can. I mean, I’m not gonna do that in a room full of people, but I…
Ruth Institute (40:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (40:28)
I’ll actually say it out loud if I can. And sometimes I even add, whatever that thought was about, whatever person that was that was involved in that thought or that memory that pops up, I will say out loud, that is not part of my inheritance in you, Lord.
Father, I take that thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That is not part of my inheritance in you. My only sexual inheritance in God is my wife. And if a thought about sex does not connect with my wife, I need to deal with that thought. And the scripture way to do that is to take it captive to the obedience of Christ. So I do a lot of that kind of stuff.
Ruth Institute (40:48)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (41:15)
And I’m always looking for the scriptural way because I know if it’s in the scriptures, it’s going to work.
Ruth Institute (41:21)
Right, and you can rely on it. You know you didn’t make it up yourself. You know what I mean? You’re less apt to kid yourself if you’ve got something very specific that it’s grounded in. And now you have enough experiences that you know, okay, this is a trick of the devil, get lost. Is that all you got, Satan? Get out of my face. You kind of know what to do. Do you know, our mutual friend, I assume you know Andrew Rodriguez, one of our friends who’s a therapist.
Daniel Mingo (41:41)
Yes. Yes.
Ruth Institute (41:51)
one of my conversations with him, he was describing to me some of the young men that he counsels. And he talks to them about, I don’t think he used this terminology, but he talked to them about, when the thought comes up, here’s what you do with it. And at one point, one of these guys said to him, wait, you mean I have to do this every single time? And I laughed out loud when Andrew said that, because I’m like, you
Daniel Mingo (41:51)
Yes.
Ruth Institute (42:15)
Yeah, you do. You have to look both ways every time you cross the street. You have to look both ways. And these things are going to come up. And so it’s like for this, for many people who are younger and who have grown up with the whole born gay paradigm, they don’t realize this is just a part of being a mature, responsible person, that you need to be responsible for your thoughts and your feelings and the meaning you assign to them and all of that.
But what that means is that you have the opportunity to have a morally serious life. You’re not saying, I get to do whatever I want and it’s all going to be fine. That actually doesn’t work for making you happy, you know? And it certainly doesn’t work for keeping friends, right? Because it just doesn’t. So anyway, I think this has been very helpful for people to hear something about the process because I knew you’d have something to say about this.
Daniel Mingo (42:56)
right.
Ruth Institute (43:11)
And so again, if there are people who have watched this far, thank you so much for watching this far and hanging in there with us with this very interesting conversation with Daniel Mingo. But do please put in the comments if you have experiences like this where you have a perennial problem and it doesn’t have to be a sexual problem, or maybe it’s your temper, or it could be all kinds of things where you need to be attentive.
on a regular basis to a particular temptation to sin. Please tell us about it because I think that it’s part of the human condition. It’s not unique to people who experience same-sex attraction.
what advice do you have for family members of people who are dealing with same-sex attraction? Maybe the parents, the brothers and sisters, the family, the friends. What advice do you have? What can they do that would be helpful or that would have been helpful to a young Daniel?
Give some, share your thoughts with the family members.
Daniel Mingo (44:11)
First of all, I think for parents, if you are not used to telling your child that you love them, when you hear from them that they believe they are gay, this is the perfect opportunity to say to them, I love you, and that will never change. And let that be the first opportunity and a long string of opportunities that you take to let them know that.
The second thing is don’t freak out.
sexuality we are finding is fluid. Like we’ve said several times in our talk, nobody is born gay. But what a lot of people don’t realize is just because you have the attractions doesn’t mean that you have to adopt a gay identity. You are not stuck in a gay identity.
You have all kinds of options about how you deal with those attractions. One of those options being don’t act on it. So the parents can become very knowledgeable of the homosexual condition. And there are certain books that I would recommend over others.
the book that Joe Dallas wrote called Desires in Conflict, that is an excellent book for the struggler, for parents, spouses, friends, clergy. That is a book that explains the homosexual condition in such.
Ruth Institute (45:39)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Mingo (45:44)
easily understandable terms that everyone can benefit from that book. Joe Dallas, Desires in Conflict, excellent book.
Ruth Institute (45:53)
We’ll put that
in our show notes. We will put that in our show notes for sure. For sure, Daniel. Daniel Mingo, is there anything else that you’d like to add today?
Daniel Mingo (45:57)
Great, thank you.
In 2014, our ministry was having trouble getting into churches to talk about God’s redemptive power in the homosexual’s life. Hardest thing I found in 22 years. My board of directors and I came up with the idea to put up a billboard in Louisville that would address and bring attention to the ministry. And what we came up with was a billboard that says,
not everyone who is gay is happy. You have options. And then it gave the information to contact Abba’s Delight Ministry. Well, you would have thought I killed a small child. I got so much feedback and blowback from that, but the sentiment about that is the truth.
You do have options. If you have attractions, you have many options. You do not have to adopt a gay lifestyle. And if you want to contact me, we can talk about that. Because I love to tell people that you don’t have to be gay. Actually, there was a book written years ago, it’s out of print now, called You Don’t Have to Be Gay.
Ruth Institute (47:09)
It’s interesting the language that you use there. You said you have options. Do you know who else uses that language? You have options. It’s the pregnancy care center ladies. know, when they’re pregnant, scared, you have options, right? And the enemy has exactly the same reaction, right? In other words, the pro-abortion people act like they had just killed a small child, which is really ironic that you use that particular language because
Daniel Mingo (47:16)
No.
Yes.
Ruth Institute (47:36)
The idea that somebody can exit from this, it’s like they have a script set up for you. Oh, you’re pregnant, here’s the script, here’s what you do. Oh, you feel same-sex attractive, here’s your script, here’s what you do. And when somebody resists that script or goes off script, they get really upset. And to even say, you have options, right? It’s very ironic, I think, particularly the pro-choice people. They don’t really believe all choices are the same.
Daniel Mingo (47:59)
Yes.
Ruth Institute (48:02)
So Daniel Mingo, we’re going to put into our show notes a link to Abba’s Delight. We’ll put a link to Joe Dallas’s book and anything else that you’d like to recommend. We’ll certainly include that for people. It has certainly been my pleasure having this conversation with you. And I hope that all of our followers who have watched and who have listened, that many of them will reach out to you and that those who have friends or loved ones that they’re concerned about, I’m sure they’re going to take a lot of solace and hope.
from the conversation we’ve had here. So I want to thank you so much for being my guest today on this episode of the Dr. J Show.
Daniel Mingo (48:37)
Thank you so much for having me. I love doing it.

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